The threat that tech monopolies pose to democracies is about more than the prices they charge: it’s the concentration of power, data and control over the public space — and their ability to wield this power over a growing number of economic activities, especially in the infrastructure and technologies of the future. The following companies operate as either monopolies or oligopolies in their respective fields: Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify. Integrated into everything, everywhere, their technology will blanket the world.

cultural hegemony.” That is, where domination can be achieved through controlling the ideas and assumptions available to the public. The idea, associated with philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci

In 1995, left-wing academics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron detailed the philosophy and ideas of the new tech wunderkinds, christening it “The Californian Ideology.” This ideology represented a fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco and entrepreneurial free market zeal.

All you needed to get to utopia was a belief in “disruption,” the idea that progress is achieved through smashing up old industries and institutions and replacing them with something new and digital.

Money and ideas in Silicon Valley have a very complicated relationship. Silicon Valley runs according to a Faustian pact: money in exchange for world-changing ideas.

Over the years, the big tech firms have very carefully cultivated the Californian Ideology. Even though they are massive multi-billion-dollar corporations with huge PR teams, they pitch themselves as anti-establishment.The worse these companies behave and the richer they become, the more they spend on looking cool and talking about fairness and community.

And to whom do we look in order to solve our collective social problems? It’s no longer the state, but the modern tech-geek superhero.

Total victory for the monopoly is not over economics or politics. It’s over assumptions, ideas and possible futures.

Google had acknowledged several years ago that college degrees are slowly becoming irrelevant and what matters most are skills.

The list of the 15 companies where you can apply and get selected without a college degree are- Google, Bank of America, Chipotle, Lowe’s, IBM, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Apple, Publix, Hilton, Whole Foods, Costco Wholesale, Penguin Random House, Ernst and Young (EY), and Google.

for Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, the opportunities in the world’s largest internet market may be too good to resist. And the full scope of the company’s interest in China now appears to be broader than just internet search.

The latest hint came from Waymo, the driverless-car company that was spun out of Google in 2016. Chinese media noticed this week that the business had quietly registered a Shanghai subsidiary in May, suggesting that it wants a piece of an industry that the Chinese government has made a priority.

Unlike Google, Apple runs its own app store in China, heeding government directives about the kinds of apps that can be available to Chinese users. Microsoft and Amazon offer cloud computing services, working with local partners and following strict controls on how customers’ data is stored.

Baidu, maker of the country’s leading search engine, has made its autonomous-vehicle software platform available to dozens of local and foreign companies. SAIC Motor, China’s largest carmaker, is working with the e-commerce titan Alibaba. BMW and Daimler have received permission in China to test their own self-driving vehicles.

Google’s sites in London, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Seoul, São Paulo and Warsaw (in a converted former vodka distillery) are hubs for entrepreneurs, providing workspace for startup founders as well as networking and educational events.

the recent offer from Sidewalk Labs – a company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company – to redevelop Toronto’s waterfront as a reason to be concerned about the company’s interests in potentially extracting data from cities.

Google’s history of tax evasion and mass surveillance as examples of actions that make it incompatible with the progressive values of the local area.

How Has Google Affected The Way Students Learn?

con?:with the advent of personal assistants like Siri and Google Now that aim to serve up information before you even know you need it, you don’t even need to type the questions.

pro: Whenever new technology emerges — including newspapers and television — discussions about how it will threaten our brainpower always crops up, Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker wrote in a 2010 op-ed in The New York Times. Instead of making us stupid, he wrote, the Internet and technology “are the only things that will keep us smart.”

Pro and con: Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Geneva, wrote in 2011 that we may have lost the ability for oral memorization valued by the Greeks when writing was invented, but we gained additional skills of reading and text analysis.

con: Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Geneva, wrote in 2011 that we may have lost the ability for oral memorization valued by the Greeks when writing was invented, but we gained additional skills of reading and text analysis.

con: A 2008 study commissioned by the British Library found that young people go through information online very quickly without evaluating it for accuracy.

pro or con?: A 2011 study in the journal Science showed that when people know they have future access to information, they tend to have a better memory of how and where to find the information — instead of recalling the information itself.

pro: The bright side lies in a 2009 study conducted by Gary Small, the director of University of California Los Angeles’ Longevity Center, that explored brain activity when older adults used search engines. He found that among older people who have experience using the Internet, their brains are two times more active than those who don’t when conducting Internet searches.

the Internet holds great potential for education — but curriculum must change accordingly. Since content is so readily available, teachers should not merely dole out information and instead focus on cultivating critical thinking

make questions “Google-proof.”

“Design it so that Google is crucial to creating a response rather than finding one,” he writes in his company’s blog. “If students can Google answers — stumble on (what) you want them to remember in a few clicks — there’s a problem with the instructional design.”

Will remote workers be able to be seen and interacted with via their holograms (i.e., attending their meetings virtually)? What would this mean for remote learners?

Will our smartphones increasingly allow us to see information overlaid on the real world? (Think Pokémon Go, but putting that sort of technology into a vast array of different applications, many of which could be educational in nature)

How do/will these new forms of HCI impact how we design our learning spaces?

Will students be able to pick their preferred learning setting (i.e., studying by a brook or stream or in a virtual Starbucks-like atmosphere)?

Will more devices/platforms be developed that combine the power of AI with VR/AR/MR-related experiences? For example, will students be able to issue a verbal question or command to be able to see and experience walking around ancient Rome?

Will there be many new types of learning experiences,like what Microsoft was able to achieve in its collaboration with Case Western Reserve University [OH]? Its HoloLens product transforms the way human anatomy can be taught.

p. 22 Extensive costs for VR design and development drive the need for collaborative efforts.

Case Western Reserve University, demonstrates a collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and Microsoft to create active multi-dimensional learning using holography.

the development of more affordable high-quality virtual reality solutions.

AR game developed by the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences [Austria] (http://www.fh-salzburg.ac.at/en/) that teaches about sustainability, the environment and living green.

Whether using AR for a gamified course or to acclimate new students to campus, the trend will continue into 2017.

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15 Tech Tool Favorites From ISTE 2016

Google ExpeditionsThis virtual reality field trip tool works in conjunction with Google Cardboard and has just been officially released. The app allows teachers to guide students through an exploration of 200 (and growing) historical sites and natural resources in an immersive, three-dimensional experience. The app only works on Android devices and is free.

FlippityThis app works in conjunction with Google Sheets and allows teachers to easily make a Jeopardy-style game.

Google Science JournalThis Android app allows users to do science experiments with mobile phones. Students can use sensors in the phone or connect external sensors to collect data, but can also take notes on observations, analyze and annotate within the app.

Google CastThis simple app solves issues of disparate devices in the classroom. When students download the app, they can project from their devices onto the screen at the front of the room easily. “You don’t have to have specific hardware, you just have to have Wi-Fi,”

ConstituteThis site hosts a database of constitutions from around the world. Anything digitally available has been aggregated here. It is searchable by topic and will pull out specific excerpts related to search terms like “freedom of speech.”

YouTubea database of YouTube Channels by subject to help educators with discoverability (hint subjects are by tab along the bottom of the document).

Zygote BodyThis freemium tool has a lot of functionality in the free version, allowing students to view different parts of human anatomy and dig into how various body systems work.

PixlrThis app has less power than Photoshop, but is free and fairly sophisticated. It works directly with Google accounts, so students can store files there.

uild With ChromeThis extension to the Chrome browser lets kids play with digital blocks like Legos. Based on the computer’s IP address, the software assigns users a plot of land on which to build nearby. There’s a Build Academy to learn how to use the various tools within the program, but then students can make whatever they want.

Google CS FirstBuilt on Scratch’s programming language, this easy tool gives step-by-step instructions to get started and is great for the hesitant teacher who is just beginning to dip a toe into coding.

Blackboard Learn Gets Dropbox Integration

Announced at the Educause 2016 conference, Blackboard Learn users will now be able to collaborate on documents using the cloud sharing platform Dropbox.

My note: BB is only catching up with Google, which has Google Drive (~ Dropbox) and Google Classroom (~ BB). It doesn’t matter how much hype BB is trying to produce, the fact is that BB is behind.
D2L is even farther behind, without an integration of any video tool. Google has Google Hangouts and BB purchased several video conferencing tools until it got “the right one.”
D2L announce in 2010 an integration with Skype but it has not happened. Now, D2L will be double behind without integration of a cloud-based file space.